Tuesday 12 December 2000 07.10 EST
First published on Tuesday 12 December 2000 07.10 EST

Does it matter who won? Since election day neither George W Bush nor Al Gore has covered himself with glory, and "Bore and Gush" leave a lingering impression that there's little to choose between them anyway. But there is one vital area of real difference which has been almost unmentioned, and that is the Middle East. Its importance is highlighted by Ehud Barak's resignation, which has precipitated a new crisis and an Israeli election in the new year.

By European standards, the distinction between Republicans and Democrats often does seem slight, even on what are meant to be "wedge" domestic issues. Bush is opposed to abortion, but then Gore is none too keen on it. Bush gloats over the people he is going to put to death (convicted of capital offences or not as the case might be), but Gore also supports the death penalty. On many foreign policy questions they are also closer than election rhetoric suggests. Bush preaches "strategic humility" and wants American soldiers to "stop escorting kiddies to school" in the Balkans, but it's clear that some degree of American withdrawal is coming under whichever party.

But on the Middle East, the divide between the two is actually greater than election rhetoric suggests. If Gore wins, he will be the most totally committed partisan of Israel ever to be president. He has been nurtured and hand-reared for the role for 35 years. At Harvard, he was taught by Martin Peretz, a rich academic who later bought the New Republic, and has made that weekly paper a byword for uncritical or even fanatical support for Israel right or wrong. After decades spent grooming his protege for the White House, "the Palestinian-hating Peretz", as his foe, the Jewish radical Michael Lerner, calls him, sees the prize snatched away. Peretz's rage now permeates the pages of his magazine.

Then turn to the other side. To talk of policy differences "between Bush and Gore" misses the point. Writing about the two candidates over this past month, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times shrewdly saw something: Gore wants to win the presidency much more than the Democrats do, and the Republicans want to win much more than Bush does. That sums up the two men more broadly. Gore is a workaholic and a wonk, Bush is a indolent booby who devotes as little as possible of such intellectual energy as he may possess to the political task in hand.

His underlying foreign policy isn't so much Ernest Bevin's - to buy a ticket and go anywhere I damn well please - as George V's - abroad is bloody and foreigners are hell. This is, after all, a man who, far from buying tickets, has never visited Europe and whose world view isn't so much isolationist as parochial. Bush couldn't find Hebron on a map, let alone explain the historical origins of the conflict in the Holy Land. And so, whereas Gore's attitude to the Middle East stems from that acutely personal partisanship in which he has been inculcated, Bush's will in reality stem from his cabal of advisers.

A fascinating cabal it is. His enforcer in Florida has been none other than James Baker, who was secretary of state in Bush the elder's administration. It was at that time, when the Middle East was being discussed at a government meeting, and Jewish-Americans influence was mentioned, that Baker is supposed to have said, "Fuck the Jews. They don't vote for us anyway." Whether or not he did utter the pithy phrase (not surprisingly, he didn't confirm it publicly), the words were blazoned as a headline in one Israeli newspaper and Baker is execrated to this day in Israel and by its American supporters.

Although every presidential candidate has to intone the platitudes about "Israel-our-truest-friend-in-the-Mideast", Republican administrations have been much less susceptible to Israeli pressure than the Democrats. That was true of Eisenhower at the time of Suez, of Reagan selling Awac surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia in 1981 despite ferocious Israeli opposition and of Bush the elder 10 years later. Summing up his frustration at Israeli intransigence - and lobbying - in faintly risible but heartfelt words, he said that he was "one lonely little guy down here" who was "up against some powerful political" groups.

There are good objective reasons for Republican detachment from Israel. It's quite true that the Jews don't vote for them anyway. And Israel doesn't have any oil fields. The likely Bush administration drips oil from every orifice, and has many good Arab friends, if not in Gaza, then in the Gulf.

It has been President Clinton's last great wish to secure a "legacy", something by which posterity might remember his presidency without sniggering. That was why he tried so desperately to secure a "final settlement" for the Middle East last summer, a fatuous aspiration even before the latest recrudescence of bloodshed.

There isn't going to be a settlement before the new occupant takes over the White House, or before the Israeli elections. Then, if 2001 sees continuing violence, with another Bush as president and - who knows? - either Binyamin Netanyahu or Ariel Sharon in power in Israel, it could be an interesting year.